106 M C K I N S EY Q UA RT E R LY CEO Interview: Arvind Krishna I N HIS 30 YEARS AT IBM, ARVIND Krishna has been driving innovation across core technologies, including AI, quantum, and cloud, to name a few. Since taking on the CEO role in 2020, the company’s market value has tripled. That’s a direct result of the changes he has intro duced: doubling down on software, shedding big businesses that weren’t aligned with his new strategy, pursuing innovation, embracing the potential of AI, and getting a 250,000-person company to move with alacrity. Krishna recently sat down for a conversation with McKinsey Senior Partner Eric Kutcher about IBM’s turnaround and the opportunities ahead, including his vision of the future of quantum computing. What follows is an edited transcript of their conversation. Eric Kutcher: The phrase “interesting times” might be the understatement of the century. As a CEO, what are the forces at play today that you think about? How do you lead through those forces in a world where you have very little control over them? Arvind Krishna: The word I would use is opportu nity. Yes, the world is less predictable than it used to be, but when things are less predictable, by definition there’s volatility. When there’s volatility, that means that the current world order changes, and as it changes you have to ask, “What’s the opportunity?” Let’s take inflation as an example. A consequence of inflation is higher interest rates; when there are higher interest rates, people are looking for more productivity; as they look for more productivity, there’s a greater appetite for technology solutions. So, absolutely, volatility brings all these headwinds. And you could hunker down and say, “Oh, my God. This is not what I was planning.” Yes, it’s not what you were planning, but your competition has the same headwinds. So, I would say whenever there’s uncertainty, there’s IBM hybrid cloud servers. I M A G E S C O U R T E S Y O F I B M - -